2025: Gabriela Ivens, “Nature as a Digital Witness: Using Environmental Clues to Investigate Human Rights Abuses”

Gabriela Ivens (Human Rights Watch): “Nature as a Digital Witness: Using Environmental Clues to Investigate Human Rights Abuses”

Red Bar, Volkstheater Wien
Arthur-Schnitzler-Platz 1
1070 Wien
Austria

Chaired by Burkhard Wolf (Universität Wien), Roland Innerhofer (Universität Wien)
Comment by Stefanos Levidis (Forensic Architecture Initiative Athens)

Sponsored by:
Global Mosse Lecture Series
Volkstheater Wien
Stadt Wien
Universität Wien

Gabriela Ivens is the head of open source research and part of the Digital Investigations Lab. She assists and conducts investigations and develops new investigative methods using publicly available information. Previously, Gabriela was a Ford-Mozilla Fellow hosted at WITNESS, and prior to that worked for Syrian Archive and led the investigative portal Exposing the Invisible. Gabriela holds a masters in Human Rights from University College London.

Stefanos Levidis is a spatial and visual researcher, and is the co-founder and co-director of Forensic Architecture Initiative Athens (FAIA). Stefanos has been working with Forensic Architecture and Forensis since 2016, overseeing the agencies’ work on borders and migration and holds a PhD from the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, titled ‘Border Natures: The Environment as Weapon at the Edges of Greece’. He is an Associate Professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts and a postdoctoral fellow at the National Hellenic Research Foundation under the project ‘MUTE: Soundscapes of Trauma’.

Burkhardt Wolf is a Professor of Modern German Literature (with a special focus on literary and media theory) at the University of Vienna. He is the principal applicant for the ongoing international WEAVE research project “Bureaugraphie: Administration After the Age of Bureaucracy.” His research focuses on the history of discourse on violence, economics, and governmentality; the poetics of knowledge of affect; the cultural and media history of seafaring, and the cultural techniques and literary history of administration. In addition to positions at Humboldt University in Berlin and a multi-year Heisenberg Fellowship from the DFG, his academic career has included visiting professorships in Berlin, Munich, Santa Barbara, Bloomington, Beijing, and Berkeley.